Let me begin this post by saying sorry to Edre Peraza, acroamor and Chris K. for not having included comments about their music releases they have presented here. I’ve enjoyed a lot your music, sorry for not stating it before!
I want to introduce with this post a new album released recently in which I’ve participated, the self titled album of Sunken Screens (well, not that recently, it was released at the end of June 2022 but I’ve been shy about writing here about it). This is a project created by yours truly on guitars and Pepe Mallent on vocals (Pepe is also a forum member as pepemallent).
In fact the project has its genesis somehow in the Acclaimed Music Forum. Pepe and me were talking about recording something together for years but the starting point was, funnily enough, the thread about guilty pleasures (see here). I voted for a song off “Grease” soundtrack, “There Are Worse Things I Could Do,” and Pepe suggested doing a cover as a Jazz standard. And then we began to suggest other songs that could fit with that song (eventually another song from my guilty pleasures list made the cut, The Korgis’ “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime”). The songs selected should meet only two criteria: a) they should appear on the soundtrack of a movie or a TV series and b) we should be able to come with a personal touch, with a music arrangement different enough of the original (that’s why initial purposes like Twin Peak’s “Falling” were discarded, we couldn’t come up with a satisfactory approach, the original was too unique).
We entered the studio for the first time in Summer of 2018 and recorded a demo with only acoustic guitar and voice for David Bowie’s “I’m Deranged” from David Lynch’s “Lost Highway” (Bowie is the main favourite artist Pepe and me have in common). We wanted then to make a sparse album with only guitar, voice and cello but the more time we spent in the studio the more elaborated the arrangements became. We got trapped by the magic of the studio and pushed by the brilliant work of José Luis Macías (our producer) we began to bring on some musicians, coming from the Valencian scenes of rock (Salva Ortiz, Adolfo Barberá), folk (Jesús Barranco), blues (Paul Pacifico) and classical (Mariano Siccardi, Emiliano Pérez). A special mention to Samuel G Ledesma, the cello player and the responsible for the excellent string arrangements.
And now let me introduce the songs one by one:
1. “Game of Thrones Main Title Theme” from “Game of Thrones” (2011-2019). We chose to bookend the album with two instrumental songs. In this first one I played every instrument (except percussion). We chose not to include cello here even if the main melody on the original is played by a cello. We replaced it with a fuzzy guitar giving it a Morricone flavour.
2. “I’m Deranged” from “Lost Highway“ (1997). Initially only backed by a guitar arpeggio Sufjan Stevens-style, it grew in the studio with the inclusion of a classical trio of piano, violin and cello. We asked Mariano Siccardi to play the piano solo as if a cat walked over the keys. Fortunately he didn’t follow our advice and made something much better than this.
3. “Goodbye Horses” from “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991). A long time favourite of Pepe Mallent and José Luis Macías (by the way, Q-Lazzarus, the original singer, died recently). It’s the song in which the magic touch of Macías is more noticeable, he moved the instruments up and down the song, for instance using the cello melody (initially recorded as an answer to the vocals) as an intro. Pepe and me loved it that much that we chose it as the first single (not a physical release but as a music video).
4. “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime” from “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004). One of my guiltiest pleasures. And maybe the cover I’m more proud of, especially of the bass part (played by myself) and the way the cello intertwines with the E-bow during the chorus. One of the only two songs with real drums, superbly played by Salva Ortiz, with a coda with echoes of Bowie’s “Five Years.”
5. “The Shadow of Your Smile” from “The Sandpiper” (1965). A standard that Pepe always wanted to record (he sang exquisitely on this one). It includes a Scott Walker sample throughout the song (and the sound of Macías boiling an egg on the intro).
6. “Way Down in the Hole / Red Right Hand” from “The Wire” (2002-2008) and “Peaky Blinders” (2013-). Initially we wanted to cover both songs separately but we decided to do a medley when we noticed the similarities between them (obviously Nick Cave was influenced by the Tom Waits tune). The song features the collaboration of our English friend Paul Pacifico that played an awesome harmonica part.
7. “Little Baby” from “The Affair” (2014-2019): a family affair. My wife Ana suggested the cover, my brother Jesús sang excellent backing vocals (joined by my daughter Mar and Pepe’s daughter Pilar on the shoo-be-doo-bees) and Pepe’s son sang beautifully the call-and-response part during the bridge.
8. “I’ll Be There For You” from “Friends” (1994-2004). Covering a song as widely known as this one is a tricky affair. I don’t know if we succeeded but it was highlighted by the only professional review we had: “Can the power pop of The Rembrandts be abbreviated until losing the “power” and becoming a radiant mid-tempo almost like americana?” (Carlos Ciurana for Los Pilotos Suicidas).
9. “Far from Any Road” from “True Detective” (2014-2019). Let me highlight the cellos (reproducing the melody played in the original by mariachi trumpets) and the wonderful electric guitar played by Adolfo Barberá (a true legend of rock in Valencia and the producer of the first recording of my first band back in 1983).
10. “Dark End of the Street” from “The Deuce” (2017-2019). The first of three consecutive songs retaining the original concept, only guitar, cello and vocals. And one of my personal favourites of the album, especially because of Pepe’s vocals and Samuel’s great string arrangements.
11. “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” from “Grease” (1978): the guilty one. A guilty pleasure of mine that was also guilty for igniting the whole project. We tried to play it as a jazz standard. And we didn’t change the pronouns on the song, something that gained for us the absolute honour of appearing in Dan’s list of LGBT-related songs.
12. “Tuyo” from “Narcos” (2017-2019). The third song retaining the original concept is also the only song sung in Spanish, our native tongue. Pepe sang it tastefully, a little behind the beat, modelled in the vocal styles of Caetano Veloso or Joao Gilberto.
13. “Let the Mystery Be” from “The Leftovers” (2014-2017). Pepe and me recorded a one-take demo and we sent it to my brother Jesús that completely transformed the song adding amazing parts of banjo, lap-steel, autoharp and backing vocals, with my younger brother Miguel also adding a bass part and Macías percussion created from samples of washboards and bicycle bells.
14. “Cold Little Heart” from “Big Little Lies” (2017-2019). Another one of my favourites, the backing vocals of Mar, Pilar and (my niece) Carmen, the fantastic strings and especially the drums by Salva Ortiz (another legend of rock in Valencia) that transformed the slow-soul beat of the Kiwanuka original in a faster pop rock beat in a similar vein as R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion.”
15. “Running Wild” from “The Sopranos” (1999-2007). The instrumental that closes the album features outstanding performances of the classical trio.
Official credits:
Sunken Screens are Pepe Mallent (voice) and Honorio Barranco (guitars)
Arrangements: Sunken Screens and José Luis Macías
String arrangements: Samuel C. Ledesma
Production: José Luis Macías
Cover art design: César Mallent
Recorded in Estudios La Sala, Valencia, from August 2018 until August 2020
Personnel:
Pepe Mallent: lead vocals (2-14), backing vocals (2-4, 8-10, 14), whistle (6)
Honorio Barranco: electric guitar (1, 3-8, 10-12, 14), acoustic guitar (1-3, 7-9, 13-15), Spanish guitar (1, 7, 12), E-bow (3, 4), bass (4, 6), percussion (6), vocals (6)
José Luis Macías: keyboards, programming, electronic percussion, samples, production (1-15)
Samuel C. Ledesma: cello (2-4, 6, 9-12, 14-15)
Emiliano Pérez: violin (2, 4, 15)
Mariano Siccardi: piano (2, 15)
Jesús Barranco: backing vocals (7, 13), autoharp (13), banjo (13), acoustic guitar (13), lap steel (13)
Salva Ortiz: drums (4, 14)
Rodrigo Quezada: percussion (1)
Paul Pacifico: harmonica (6)
Adolfo Barberá: electric guitar (9)
Miguel Barranco: bass (13)
Pepe Mallent Trenor: vocals (7)
Mar Barranco, Pilar Mallent, Carmen Barranco: backing vocals (7, 14)
And that’s all. Hope you like the album. You can buy the CD at https://juanvitoria.com/shop/cds-de-mus ... ns-cd.html